Portfolio Insights:“At $609.0 million (April 30, 2014), McMaster’s endowment is the seventh largest in Canada (Canadian Association of University Business Officers’ most recent report).

Spending from an endowed trust fund is governed by McMaster’s Board of Governors’ Expenditure Policy: General Trust Funds (Externally Restricted Endowments). The goal of this policy is to allow the University to maintain an even hand between current and prospective beneficiaries consistent with the requirements of a charitable trustee in perpetuity. This policy limits the amount of investment income allocated for spending to 4%, a spending rate comparable to McMaster’s peer institutions. The 4% available for spending each year has been calculated on the monthly average market value of the capital balance of the trust fund for the last five calendar years or the period in existence, whichever is less.” (Source)

1) The McMaster University Investment Pool, including endowment funds are externally managed. The Board of Governors Finance Committee maintains overall responsibility for investment policy and may delegate such responsibilities as it sees fit to the University Administration in the implementation of the established policies. The Finance Committee is required to have a minimum of six members of the Board of Governors, in addition to the Chair and the Vice-­Chair(s) of the Board, the President, the Provost, and Vice‐Presidents as ex officio members. The responsibility of the Committee is to exercise general supervision over the financial affairs of the University and meets at least quarterly to conduct its financial oversight. (Source)

2) In May 2007, MURA and McMaster University signed an agreement to establish an Awards Endowment Fund which will provide on going funding for the two awards in Gerontology currently supported by the Association. The two awards are referred to as: the McMaster University Retirees Association Scholarship and the McMaster University Retirees Association Prize. (Source)

3) Michael DeGroote has donated $2 million to an endowment fund to support medical research at McMaster University’s medical school. The $3-million fund also had contributions from Hamilton Health Sciences Foundation, McMaster, and St. Joseph’s Healthcare Foundation. The fund will be named after Dr. John G. Kelton, who is the dean of the medical school. The endowment will allow for more medical research projects than are currently being funded by Hamilton Health Sciences Foundation and McMaster. (Source)

4) Historically, McMaster University is the outgrowth of educational work initiated by Baptists in central Canada as early as the 1830’s. Named after Senator William McMaster (1811-1887), who bequeathed substantial funds to endow “a Christian school of learning”, the University was incorporated under the terms of an act of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario in 1887. The new University, housed in McMaster Hall in Toronto, offered courses in arts and theology. Degree programs began in 1890, with degrees first being conferred in 1894.

In 1930 the University moved from Toronto to Hamilton, the forty-first academic session opening on the present site. The University’s lands and new buildings were secured through gifts from graduates, members of the churches of the Baptist Convention of Ontario and Quebec, and citizens of Hamilton. (Source)

5) McMaster University is a public research university in Hamilton, Ontario, and is named for William McMaster, a former senator who bequeathed the university’s endowment when it formed from the merger of Toronto Baptist College and Woodstock College. The university opened in 1890 in Toronto, and it moved to Hamilton in 1930 to take advantage of a gift of land. The university operated as a Baptist organization until 1957, when it became a privately chartered, publicly-funded, non-denominational school. The first degree granted by the school was in 1894, when courses of study were limited to theology and the arts. (Source)

About Richard C. Wilson

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